


i'll misbehave if it turns you on

by horriblekids



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Demons, M/M, Michael/Harry is sort of implied, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horriblekids/pseuds/horriblekids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Calum is less than truthful with his band and may or may not have accidentally summoned a demon while drunk. Who, coincidentally, takes on the form of the person he wants most to sleep with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll misbehave if it turns you on

**Author's Note:**

> This came about after I had a weird dream which became the plot for this fic. I didn't intend to write a Halloween-y fic but here we are, I guess. Playlist for the fic is [here](http://8tracks.com/sixmoreyears/i-ll-misbehave-if-it-turns-you-on) if anyone wants. Fic title is from All Time Low, because obviously I am cheap and cliché. Also, please know that I played it fast and loose with magic and demon info, which in part was taken from Supernatural.

It’s the first of October and Calum forgets.  
  
For most people it wouldn’t be a problem. He hasn’t forgotten in years - not since he was little, maybe six or seven, the same year he met Michael anyway - and he doesn’t even think about it until he looks at his phone in the morning and sees that the date has just rolled over to October and feels as if he’s forgotten something. He can’t quite put his finger on what though, so he rolls out of his bunk and grabs a bowl of cereal to take to the back lounge of the bus with him. When he gets there Michael’s passed out on the couch with the pause screen of his game still on the television; he leaves it there and stares blankly at his phone trying to remember what it was he had to do. Before he gets too far into it Ashton comes into the lounge and launches himself onto Michael’s sleeping form. “You dick,” Michael squeals, batting uselessly at Ashton’s thighs clamped around his legs on the touch.  
  
Luke joins them soon after and Calum forgets all about the unsettled feeling in his gut. They spend most of their day in interviews - first with the local radio station, then they bounce around between a couple of magazines and finally, an acoustic set - and then they go straight from their last interview of the day to sound check to dinner. He feels like he barely finishes eating before they’re getting rushed onstage. The energy of the crowd renews his spirit, though, and by the time they’ve gotten off stage he feels back to his usual self. “Hey,” Ashton says brightly, pulling on a clean shirt in the bunk area. “Let’s go out tonight, yeah?” And although they’re probably not legal drinking age, here, Calum knows without a doubt there will be someone to get them in. He could go for a round of drinks and some dancing.  
  
“You coming?” he asks Luke, who nods enthusiastically and checks his reflection in the mirror. Rather than spend time primping Calum runs his fingers through his hair quickly and sniffs his shirt to see if it still smells kind of okay. He pokes his head into Michael’s bunk and goes, “Going dancing, you wanna come?”  
  
Michael shrugs and looks up from his phone. He looks faintly glowing in backlit blue - Calum blinks his eyes against the glare - and just says, “Might come later.”  
  
Calum feels vaguely deflated but puts on a brave face. Together he, Ashton and Luke catch a taxi to the nearest nightclub and pay the driver in twenty dollar bills. “Don’t bother about the change,” Ashton tells the guy. They might have just made his entire week, Calum thinks, looking at the way the cabbie’s face lights up when he thumbs through the crumpled bills. Sometimes Calum feels a bit guilty about making more in one night than most guys his age make in a month. He shoves the feeling aside, determined to have a good time. No one seems to mind that they skip the line; inside it’s dimly lit and smells like sex. Ashton orders them a round of shots from the bar. “Tequila!” Once they’ve all salted their hands they down the shots at the same time, each grimacing as they bite into their lime slice. Luke lets out a loud whoop and throws his arms over their shoulders.  
  
The only thing missing, he thinks grimly, is Michael.  
  
Still, he has a good time drinking with the guys and after a couple rounds of beers he allows himself to be dragged onto the dance floor. He’s sandwiched between Luke and Ashton when the hot girl they’ve hired to sell shots comes around with a tray full of test tubes. “What’s in these,” he half-shouts in her ear.  
  
He can’t hear her even after she repeats herself, it’s so loud and he is so drunk. It’s a wonder the room isn’t spinning yet.  
  
Finally he gives up and tries his best. “Abs-Asmodai?” he asks. He hands over a bill and takes three from the tray, tossing his back right away. “Tastes like licorice, kind of,” he tells no one in particular. He doesn’t care, really - Luke wanders off with some girl to lurk at the back of the club and do god knows what - and so with just Ashton as his wingman they make their way to the center of the dance floor, wasting money buying random people shots as they dance, the sweaty mass of bodies pulsing against each other in time to the music. The strobe lights make him dizzy, a little, but he’s not quite reached blackout drunk yet. He wants to be blackout drunk.  
  
Ashton mumbles something in his ear about the bathroom and gestures at Niall, who looks happy and drunk and happy to be drunk and Calum shrugs, happier not to know about the awkward handjobs they’ll exchange in a locked stall or something. He becomes part of the throng of people grinding on each other instead. It’s good to be out of his own head for a little bit. After a few more songs he feels hands on his hips and twists to see who they belong to. He really should have known, though, from the tattoos and nearly-translucent skin. “Hey, you,” Michael says, breath hot against his skin. Calum leans into him instinctively.  
  
“Thought you weren’t coming,” he shouts over the music.  
  
Michael’s hand pushes up under his shirt to press against his stomach. “Changed my mind.”  
  
This is bad - Calum’s drunk and he’s still drinking, dancing with a beer in his hand - and he has been trying to avoid trying to kiss his best friend for months now. He swallows the rest of his beer in one gulp. “I am very drunk,” he concludes. Michael smells sort of different, smoke and sweat and something else under it. If Michael’s kind of high, he doesn’t mind it. That’s probably all it is and so he pushes the thoughts from his mind, instead focussed on the hands on his hips and body pressed close to his own. When the shots girl comes around again he hands her a five dollar bill and downs the shot so fast he can’t even taste what it is.  
  
“You looking to get fucked tonight or something?”  
  
It takes a minute for him to decide if the innuendo was intentional or not. The next song, he turns so they’re dancing chest to chest, so he can properly look at Michael - who these last few months has actually grown taller, if that’s possible - and he’s so drunk he can’t do anything besides throw his arms over Michael’s shoulders clumsily. He’s totally lost sight of his bandmates now and tells Michael, “Ash and Niall are fucking in the bathroom.” And he’s so stupidly stumble-drunk that when someone bumps him slightly it’s Michael he grabs onto for support, clinging to his shoulders. Michael laughs against his hair, pulls him closer by his front belt loops.  
  
He lets out a little yelp of surprise the first time Michael’s hand grazes his ass. The second time he tries not to react at all, lets it stay there, digs his fingers into Michael’s shoulder. It’s not surprising that he’s half-hard in his jeans already, lost in a daze of alcohol and hands on his body and the smell of his favorite boy close by. At this point they’re not so much dancing as shamelessly grinding against each other - Calum in the back of his head thinks that if there weren’t so many people around that it could almost be a prelude to sex - and he could swear that Michael is actually trying to do this to him.   
  
Calum decides that this is the perfect opportunity to get another drink. “I’m getting another drink,” he says. “You want?”  
  
And if Michael’s mouth slides wetly over his cheek on the way to his ear it’s coincidence. “Yeah, go.”  
  
There’s a small crowd at the bar so by the time he can actually get to order, it’s already been two songs. He’s waiting for the tall bartender with the excellent hair - and as a rule bartenders all have excellent hair; he wonders if that’s part of their criteria for hiring them - when he feels a body against his, a hand slide into his back pocket. “Uh,” he says uncertainly, because he’s horny but he doesn’t know, quite, if he’s that desperate yet. He looks over his shoulder and discovers it’s Michael. “You’re really handsy tonight,” he comments.  
  
“Missed you.” Michael pulls him back to the dance floor once they have their drinks; they’re crowded up against one of the support beams so Calum leans his back against it, glad to have something to stop him wobbling all over the place. He sort of hangs on to Michael’s waist while they dance - well, now it’s more like thrusting against each other while standing - and briefly he’s glad for the fact that their wardrobe is essentially holes with little fabric in between sometimes. And then the song changes again, Michael grins and tells him “I love this song.” Calum had already known that, of course.  
  
He has to bite the inside of his cheek when Michael’s leg slides between his. “What are you,” he tries to say. The words get cut off by the sudden and inexplicable act of Michael kissing him. Calum arches into it, bunching his hand up in the back of Michael’s shirt to close the gap between them. It’s sloppy kissing; he can’t concentrate with the music pounding and Michael’s hands all over him. He opens his mouth to Michael and tastes him - the distinctly stale taste of weed mixed in with alcohol and toothpaste and something uniquely him - and he tangles his fingers in Michael’s dyed hair, tugging slightly.  
  
“Like you like this,” Michael says, before dipping his head to mouth at Calum’s throat.   
  
Calum’s only response to that is to moan and scrape his nails along Michael’s bare shoulders. “Yeah?” he manages, tipping his chin up to allow for better access. They definitely need to get somewhere more private; even in his current state he recognizes that one of two things is going to happen should they continue - either he’s going to come in his pants if they stay where they are or, and he hopes the more likely option, they find an unoccupied bathroom stall - and he just digs his fingers in as Michael sucks a bruise into his throat.  
  
“Wanna go somewhere…?”  
  
“Yeah,” Calum agrees quickly. Soon enough Michael’s got him in a locked bathroom stall and they’re kissing again, grinding on each other and moaning into each other’s mouths. He’s impressed with the deftness of Michael’s hand on his zipper after the amount he’s sure they’ve both had to drink. Tonight has turned out to be full of surprises. Like Michael’s hand stroking him - that’s, that’s definitely not something he expected - and then Michael’s teeth on the sensitive skin where his neck and shoulder meet. He gasps and presses his face against Michael's neck. “Fuck, shit,” he moans.  
  
It occurs to him that he ought to reciprocate but he’s so far gone all he can do is palm at the bulge in Michael’s jeans before he comes.   
  
He would’ve done, too, had a particularly loud round of retching in the other stall not started up and ruined the mood. “Um,” he says, face hot with embarrassment. He wants to say usually he’s better at this, usually he doesn’t come so pathetically soon, but instead he lets himself out of the stall and stares at his reflection - which looks completely and thoroughly fucked. Calum thinks his reflection looks utterly debauched; his neck and throat are dotted with vibrant red marks and he can clearly make out the teeth marks. By the time he’s pulled himself together enough to go back to the crowd and the pounding music, Michael’s nowhere in sight. He just hopes he hasn’t made a total ass of himself with this; he should’ve reciprocated. When Luke, so drunk his eyes are slits, asks him who he got off with he shrugs and goes, “No one you know,” and he feels guilty about the lie but if he hasn’t found Michael again then either he’s getting off with someone else - which Calum hates the thought of - or he’s pissed off.  
  
Feelings. To be dealt with in the morning. The three of them catch another taxi and fall into it, draping themselves all over each other until they’re delivered to the relative safety of the tour bus. Calum collapses immediately into his bunk and it’s not long before he passes out.  
  
\--  
  
Calum realizes his mistake the next morning when he wakes up six inches above his mattress. Startled, the magic bursts out of him and he hits his head as he marvels at his own stupidity. It’s October. He rubs his head where it’s tender and drags himself out of bed. It’s too bright and he feels like he’s been hit by a semi truck. Despite his extremely hungover state, however, he has work to do and it has to be done before anyone else wakes up. The thing is - well, it’s kind of a long story - it’s possible that a certain bassist of a certain Australian rock band may or may not have, um, failed to tell his bandmates that he’s a witch. Like, full-on flash bang, wakes up levitating witchery. And, as any good witch knows, the veil between the dead and the living is thinnest around the month of October - something he totally blanked on yesterday - and, like the idiot he is, he didn’t seal his magic when he should have. Once he’s managed to stumble to the bathroom he swishes with mouthwash and begins to lament his bad decisions. First and foremost being his actions at the club last night - he’s got a sizeable hickey in plain sight on his neck that hasn’t started to fade yet along with several others - and he doesn’t know whether to avoid Michael or confront him.  
  
Rather than taking any of the panadol they have Calum raps himself on the temple twice and - with a sensation not unlike having an egg cracked over his head - the headache starts to go away as the cold, slimy sensation crawls over his scalp. He doesn’t do magic in front of the boys, as a general rule. When he goes into the back lounge to lie down and watch a movie or something, Michael’s already there and gives him a strange look. “Hey,” Calum says finally, unsure how he’s supposed to be acting after last night.  
  
“Good morning,” Michael goes, very obviously staring at his neck. It takes a supreme amount of self-control not to touch the hickeys self-consciously. He can feel his face growing hot; Calum thinks it’d be easiest if he just disappeared into the floor. What is the proper etiquette for the morning after his best friend’s touched his cock and he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to remember it or pretend it didn’t happen? Then he realizes that he’s just been staring at Michael this entire time. He groans and flops himself down onto the couch, deciding that feigning still being hungover is the best decision.  
  
“Where’d you go last night?” he asks, slowly working the kinks out of his neck.   
  
Michael gives him another strange look. “I was here all night playing Halo,” Michael tells him, glancing at the pause screen still on the television. “Are you okay?”  
  
And it’s then that Calum feels the enormity of his mistakes. He chews the inside of his cheek in an attempt to hide the complete sense of what-the-fuck from showing on his face. Did he… He hopes he hasn’t accidentally bewitched Michael, anyway, because that would be incredibly shitty and also immoral. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he manages to squeak out. “Just hungover.” And discreetly on his phone he googles everything he can find on tulpas. He hopes - desperately, desperately hopes - that he hasn’t accidentally created a tulpa. That would be disastrous. The thought of a Michael-shaped tulpa wandering around isn’t a comforting thought; he feels, on top of being angry at himself for forgetting the date, incredibly guilty for not knowing it wasn’t the real Michael. A sense of dull horror thumps inside his chest as the possibilities of what could be walking around wearing Michael’s face even now flood his brain.  
  
Eventually Ashton and Luke join them - and then Niall, too, never one to be separated from his boyfriend for too long - and eventually their back lounge is half-full of band members draped over one another in their hungover state. “Must have been a wild night last night from the looks of you,” Michael jokes.  
  
Niall looks directly at Calum, raises an eyebrow and goes, “Yeah, it was… magical.” Which is how Calum knows he was seen by at least one person at the club. He could, hypothetically, just wipe Niall’s memories of last night with a wave of his fingers - but again, immoral - not to mention shitty friendship if he were ever to do that to any of them. The magic wells up in his chest, begging to be let out. Since it would be foolhardy to let it all out in one big wave, Calum settles for making everyone’s phones vibrate subtly in their pockets and laughing to himself when they have no new messages. It’s a petty use of his magic but given the circumstances it’s better to blow off steam in these small ways than bottle it up and risk it exploding everywhere.  
  
The first time that had happened - the magic exploding out of him - he’d accidentally made everything in his family’s kitchen levitate. Since then he’s gotten better at controlling it, letting it out in little spurts here and there so he doesn’t call any attention to himself. The internet has nothing useful on tulpas - all there is is articles on how to create them, and half of those are contrived entirely from the episode of Supernatural that dealt with them, so not exactly a wealth of factual information there - and his sister isn’t answering his texts since it’s the middle of the night at home. Calum grumps about it all morning, curled up against Michael’s side - he’s weak, okay - and tries not to silently freak out about it. He doesn’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that Michael hasn’t mentioned his rather debauched state.  
  
Finally - when they get to the venue - he hangs back when everyone else goes to shower, trying to gather his thoughts. The couch in this green room is plush and comfortable; he sinks right into it, kicks his feet up over the arm of it. He’s only eighteen; he knows for a fact he hasn’t done any love spells on Michael - as much as he’d love to, again with it being completely immoral and not to mention that if Michael were to like him back he’d like it to be genuine - and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t summoned a tulpa, lacking most of the ingredients he’d need to make a good one. He’s always thought that thoughtforms were kind of creepy, anyway, so it doesn’t seem likely that he’d make one even if he were massively drunk. The other - and more distinct - possibility he’s considering is magical interference from other sources. There are generally a larger than average number of witches in major cities, and sometimes even covens, so it’s possible that what happened was a manifestation of someone else’s magic that he was simply privy to. Normally he’d be able to tell, but since it’s October and he hasn’t sealed his magic things will be dicey at best going forward.  
  
He doesn’t get a chance to seal his magic against tampering until he’s alone in the bathroom later; he does a hasty job of it, painting the symbols onto his skin with water and muttering the words under his breath until the sigils glow with magic briefly before burning out. Afterward he washes his face in the sink. Niall comes in while he’s drying off with paper towels and hops up to sit on the counter. “So,” Niall says, his usually pleasant disposition dampened by the serious tone in his voice.  
  
Calum wrings his hands. “I can explain,” he says defensively.  
  
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Niall tells him. Then Niall conjures an apple out of thin air and bites into it pointedly. A frustrated stream of magic bursts from Calum’s fingertips, triggering the hand dryers from across the room. He crosses his arms sourly. He knows what Niall’s thinking - that it was a love spell, that he bewitched his best friend - but it doesn’t feel like it was. It doesn’t feel like his doing, anyway, and after so long he can recognize his own magic’s signature a mile away.  
  
Instead of refuting it, he asks, “Does Ash know? About you?”  
  
“Do the boys know about you?” Niall shoots back. “And yeah, he does.” Calum withers a little, knowing that he could have been upfront with Ashton about his magic this whole time and that he hasn’t been.   
  
“That wasn’t me,” Calum says weakly. “Think whatever you want of me for not telling them, but you have to know that last night - whatever that was - I didn’t do that. I don’t do magic on my band. Not in front of them and not on them. I’ll figure it out, okay?” He means it, too, and by that point he’s so flustered he goes out the back of the venue to get some fresh air before he does something incredibly rash. There’s a low retaining wall that looks over the loading area for deliveries; he climbs up on that and sits, trying to figure out his sorry state of affairs.  
  
Michael comes to him after a while and joins him. “Hey,” he says, bumping his knee against Calum’s. “What was with you this morning? You’ve been weirder than usual all day.”  
  
And Calum doesn’t know what to say besides, “Made out with someone I shouldn’t have last night.”  
  
This would be the ideal time to tell Michael about his magic, but somehow explaining all of it and having to preface it with ‘So we kind of hooked up last night but you obviously don’t remember and I might have accidentally used magic on you’ does not seem appealing to him. Better to just let Michael forget it and and pretend that it never happened. Even if he lives to be a thousand - which is a distinct possibility - he promises himself he’ll never mention it again. He’ll have to make peace with the taste of his best friend’s mouth on his own time. The memory of Niall’s judging look is fresh in his mind. He makes a plastic bag leap in the breeze, wishing he could be honest with at least someone in his life about this.  
  
\--  
  
They have a hotel that night. It’s a day off the next day, so as usual they stay up way too late in each other’s hotel rooms drinking and hanging out until it’s time to split off into their room assignments. Calum’s rooming with Luke; they drew straws for it and secretly he’s glad because it means he can avoid the majority of his problems until daylight, anyway. He helps Luke - who once again is spectacularly drunk - to their room and tucks him in. “You’re a good friend, Cal,” Luke slurs, stretching out like a cat on the hotel bed happily. Calum pats him on the shoulder and pulls the covers over him. They’re just down the hall from where Zayn, Louis and Harry are still carrying the party on - he can smell what they’re up to even with a couple of rooms between them - and briefly he entertains the idea of joining them before he goes to sleep to try and relax himself. Again his conscience reasons with him that getting shitfaced isn’t going to help solve any of his problems, and so instead of doing that he gets into the shower and wrestles with the thoughts that have been nagging him all day.  
  
He’s only just starting to relax under the hot water when there’s a knock at the door. He’d left the bathroom door open so he could hear in case Luke needed anything - as of late their darling Luke has been quite a lush and Calum didn’t want him to, like, choke on his own vomit - so he steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist, figuring one of the others had just forgotten their phone charger or something.  
  
It’s Michael at the door and he looks worked up about something. “Hey,” he says, stepping into the room as soon as Calum opens the door to him. It’s been a long time since Calum’s seen him this on-edge; his eyes are slightly red and he’s fidgeting. Probably been over with the One Direction boys smoking up, he thinks, and without question Ashton and Niall are probably hooking up in the room he’s supposed to be sharing with Ashton. If Michael asks if he can stay in their room Calum will probably say yes.  
  
“What’s up?” Calum asks, trying to forget that he’s just in a towel.  
  
“Wanted to talk to you about something. Is Luke asleep?”  
  
They both glance over at Luke, clearly passed out in his bed with his mouth wide open. “He’s gonna catch flies,” Calum mumbles. Quickly he pulls on the first pair of pants he can find, not caring if they’re clean or not, and shimmies into them under his towel. He sits down on the edge of his bed and pats the spot beside him, indicating that Michael should sit. “So… what did you want to talk about?” he asks nervously.  
  
Michael wraps an arm around his waist, hooks his chin over Calum’s shoulder like he normally would. He smells different again; Calum wonders if he is using a different shampoo or something but he’s tired and sore and the subject thought out of his afflicted brain as quickly as it had come in. “Last night,” Michael says, his free hand rubbing over Calum’s thigh. “It seems to me that we left some things… unfinished.” He squeezes Calum’s thigh, lightly. But the suggestion is definitely there - just hanging in the air between them - and he’s too tired to be confused properly so instead he looks at Michael’s hand sliding up his thigh and bites his lip.  
  
“You kind of left in a hurry,” Calum says. “And then you acted like you didn’t remember anything this morning. What was I supposed to do?” He moves Michael’s hand off his leg and scoots a little away, trying to keep his head on straight. Again Michael smells vaguely of smoke; he’s definitely been with Zayn at least before coming here, and Calum both wants to press himself into the touch and move away, to figure out what’s going on, but he’s got Michael’s arm around him and the memory of last night on his tongue and he’s always been weak for Michael.  
  
In his ear, Michael says, “I didn’t want to compromise the band,” and then pushes him back onto the mattress. Calum goes without complaint - Michael leans over him and kisses him deeply, pinning his wrists up over his head - and his skin buzzes with the touch. He opens his eyes for a brief second to make sure they haven’t woken Luke and realizes that the things on the desk are starting to hover. This isn’t how he’d planned on ending his night but is definitely a welcome addition; Michael shifts his attention to Calum’s neck, sucking and biting at it until he’s sure to have left more bruises, and it’s obvious that he’s steadily directing his focus downward. And Calum starts to wish he’d taken more care in what he put on - he’s not wearing anything under these jeans and with all the friction he’s probably going to come all over them - and then Michael shifts his hips forward slightly, making Calum gasp. He wishes he had longer nails, not his short blunt ones, wanting to leave his mark on Michael’s pale skin. The infuriating part is that he can’t move, can’t touch, since his wrists are still pinned.  
  
Tired and kind of drunk, he doesn’t last as long as he probably should. They make out for a while longer and rock against each other with Calum trying to stifle his moans against Michael’s shoulder; when he finally can move his arms he just holds on loosely to Michael’s shoulders and pulls his hair. The furniture continues to hover two or three inches off the ground - he doesn’t care, particularly, and he thinks that they’re both too far gone to remember it later - so he lets it be. “Fuck,” he groans, scraping his nails along the length of Michael’s back.  
  
It occurs to him momentarily how obscene it is to be doing this in a hotel room with their bandmate asleep, rutting against each other fully clothed and not even trying to hide it.   
  
He comes a moment later - his vision whites out for a second and he lies there feeling hollowed out and boneless as Michael comes against him with a soft groan - and they lie there catching their breath in silence. “Never knew you’d be so greedy,” Michael comments. His pupils are huge, nearly swallowing his entire iris. Calum looks at him - with his lips swollen, eyes huge, slightly out of breath - and what he feels isn’t quite love but something nameless. He does feel greedy though. He wants more, he just doesn’t have the vocabulary for what it is he wants. After some time passes with the two of them lying there skin touching, Michael says, “I should go,” and Calum lets him.  
  
\--  
  
At some point, Calum knows, he must have dozed off because he wakes up to Luke having a nightmare. “Calum,” Luke calls out in a shaky voice, peering at him from under the cocoon of blankets he’s wrapped around himself. “Cal?”  
  
He sits up in bed and stretches, feels his joints crack and pop, and flicks on the light beside his bed. “What’s up,” he says. In the light he can see he has bruises wrapped around his wrists in the shape of Michael’s fingers. Doesn’t think about it - he gets out of bed before he can get carried away with it and goes to Luke instead. “Nightmare?” he asks, carding his fingers through Luke’s hair gently the way he likes. They forget, a lot, that Luke needs to be taken care of, that he craves touch and comfort more than the rest of them. Calum doesn’t mind; it’s nice to spend time with Luke, to know exactly where he stands with someone for once. Before he’d collapsed on the bed, spent, after Michael had left, he’d changed clothes. When he crawls into bed his bare legs brush against Luke’s and it feels exactly like being at a sleepover.  
  
“Had the worst dream ever,” Luke mumbles.  
  
Calum rubs his back in slow, soothing circles. “What about?”  
  
Luke snuffles against his shoulder. “We were here,” he says. “You were here and there was something trying to eat you. It looked like Michael but it wasn’t him. I couldn’t move. I just remember feeling helpless and trying to warn you and it was awful.” Calum pats his shoulder sympathetically. It’s been a long time since Luke’s had sleep paralysis last, but he supposes they’ve been under more stress than usual recently and they are sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. He can’t remember if Luke was sleeping on his back or not.  
  
“You’re all right now,” he says calmly. “It was just a bad dream, nothing bad’s happened.”  
  
“Felt awful though. It felt - wrong - you know? And the furniture was floating. I don’t know why I dreamed that.”  
  
Calum rubs his back some more and goes, “Your brain’s just fucking with you. It was sleep paralysis, probably, but you’re okay now and I’ll stay here if you want.” Luke nods shyly and burrows further into the mattress. He stays awake long after Luke falls back asleep wondering how much of it was a dream and how much of it was a manifestation of this - this weirdness with Michael, for one - or just Halloween season in general. By the time morning comes he’s nearly forgotten about it; he wakes up with Luke drooling gently onto his shoulder and has to roll him onto his side to stop him from snoring. “No wonder you’ve been having sleep paralysis,” he says to himself.   
  
They order room service, when Luke wakes up - pancakes and bacon and eggs - and watch cartoons on the television. “Hey, did Mikey come in here last night or did I dream that?” Luke asks. Calum finishes chewing the bite of pancake that’s in his mouth before answering.  
  
“No,” he says. The pang of guilt about lying is immediate - he doesn’t know why he lies about it, exactly - but it’s easier than explaining the truth.  
  
Luke frowns at that. “Oh,” he goes.  
  
And in that moment Calum is afraid of the possibility that there really is a thing out there wearing Michael’s face and masquerading as him, but he’s afraid to share that with Luke and he’s afraid to think those thoughts. “You okay?” he asks instead, taking in Luke’s disheveled bed-head and morning clothes and the sun on his face.  
  
“Do you believe in, like, demons and stuff?” Luke asks him suddenly.  
  
Calum shrugs. “As much as anyone else does, I guess,” he says, which is a total non-answer.  
  
Luke says, “Sometimes I think that my nightmare are caused by, like, bad spirits or something. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it lately. It just doesn’t make sense that there’s all this stuff in the world and everybody thinks there isn’t magic out there somewhere.” The way he says it - with so much wonder in his voice - makes Calum falter, reconsider his stance that his magic is something shameful that needs to be hidden. Maybe he doesn’t have to start big with the whole being honest thing; maybe he can just start here, in this hotel room, with Luke.  
  
“Maybe there is,” he concedes. He gets up and opens the curtains fully. He’s stalling - he’s looking for any opportunity to keep this part of himself hidden - but he knows he needs to. “Okay,” he says finally, sucking in a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna show you something but you have to promise not to freak out.”  
  
Luke nods, staring at him with wide blue eyes.  
  
“Just watch.”  He rubs his hands together - which he does when he’s nervous - and does the showiest thing he can think of, which is to make an energy ball between his palms and let it flicker to life on the palm of his hand held straight up. “You can touch it if you want,” he says, and offers his hand to Luke, who in turn pokes it gently and laughs when the hair on his arms stands straight up. Calum snaps his fingers and gets rid of it. He remembers being little and his mum telling him that energy balls were one of the most difficult things to manifest; he’d tried and tried for weeks until he had a small blue flickering thing between his hands and how proud he’d been, how heartbroken he’d been when he dropped it and it shattered into nothing.  
  
Luke looks at him like he’s new again. “Show me more,” he demands. Calum obliges, making Luke’s phone float right out of his hand until it’s level with his temple and nudges him with it. He’s a bit of a dick with it, flicking it out of Luke’s reach so he’ll have to dive for it. They play around with it for a while, until Calum tires of it and the novelty wears off. He’s surprised at how greedy Luke is for the magic - and then last night floods back into the forefront of his thoughts - and he feels sick to his stomach.  
  
“So I’m a witch,” he says.  
  
“Okay,” Luke says. And that’s it. That’s the secret shared between the two of them - well, and Niall - and that’s all there is. Luke doesn’t tell anyone. Their day off passes without event.  
  
\--  
  
The next day Ashton comes up to him and tells him, “Niall told me.” He doesn’t make a big deal about it, just hugs Calum briefly and then flicks him in the ear. “You should’ve told me.”  
  
Calum sighs and goes, “The only person I’ve told is Luke. It’s not exactly something I want to flaunt.” It’s all good and well for Niall - whose biggest sin is magicking his hair lilac that one time and then back to blonde again - but he’s the idiot running around without taking any precautions for Halloween. He’s been trying not to think about it - ignoring problems is always the easiest solution - and since Michael seems once again to have forgotten what happened between them and it hasn’t happened again, he’s assuming that whatever it is is out of his system now. Irritated, he rattles the wind chimes hanging above their couch.  
  
Michael comes out from the bunks half-asleep even though it’s noon and Ashton shoots him an irritated look. “I’m gonna find Niall,” he says pointedly. Calum takes great joy in aborting Ashton’s attempt at slamming the door for a dramatic exit. The bruises on his wrists are starting to fade.  
  
“Morning,” Michael says, dragging his fingers through Calum’s hair on his way past to the bathroom. He touches Calum carelessly like that all the time and Calum’s been overthinking it, wondering if he’s supposed to be taking hidden meaning from any of it or if maybe he’s hallucinated the whole thing. When he comes back he reaches over Calum for his soda and swallows half of it down without asking, and everything feels like normal.  
  
“That was mine, asshole,” Calum whines.  
  
“Now it’s mine.”  
  
He’s not even mad; he’s tired, a little, and he could use a nap before they roll into the next venue later that afternoon. “You’ve been weird lately,” Michael tells him. “I’m declaring today best friends only ‘cause I want to know what’s up with you.” He grabs Calum’s wrist and peers at the bruises. “Like this. This is weird, dude,” he says, and Calum thinks guiltily that he doesn’t even know the half of it. Which, like. Is shitty when he thinks about the fact that Michael’s the reason those bruises exist in the first place. He doesn’t even know where to start - he’s been a shitty friend and he’s been lying about a lot of things recently - so instead he huffs and leans against Michael while they play video games for the rest of the drive. “You’d tell me if there was someone, right?” Michael asks suddenly.  
  
Calum jabs the pause button and sits up. “Of course I would,” he says. “You’re my best friend.”  
  
Michael’s hands close around his wrists and it feels very like deja vu. “Is someone, like… hurting you, is someone doing this to you?” he asks. Calum twists around to see the concern in his pale green eyes, the small frown, the worried lines in his forehead. This is the Michael he’s used to. He acts like he doesn’t care so much - like he’s not affected by anything and he’s this carefree, fly by the seat of his pants guy - that it genuinely catches Calum off-guard every time he lets it show. And the truly shitty part of it is that Calum doesn’t know how to answer without being dishonest.  
  
“It’s fine, dude,” he says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone of voice. His skin itches with magic - he could just use it to make Michael forget this conversation, make things go back to the way they usually are - and he pushes it down.  
  
He feels shitty about the way Michael gathers him up against his chest after. They don’t lie to each other. It’s always been their thing - don’t lie to each other - and he’s just broken it. “Okay,” Michael goes. “As long as you’re happy.” Something inside Calum shatters; he blinks back sudden tears and swallows hard. Michael kisses the top of his head and proceeds to destroy him in the next three rounds of Mario Kart. They spend most of the day together harassing Niall and Ashton, who they catch fucking in a supply closet, and bothering the security guys to let them go outside for a bit to play soccer. No one wants to let them; Calum spends an hour following him around looking for an exit they can sneak out of before he tires of it.  
  
“I have to pee,” he says, and looks for a bathroom. He finds one a minute later and takes a piss; he’s zipping up and about to wash his hands when Michael finds him. “Uh,” he says, turning the tap on and pumping soap onto his palm before scrubbing his hands thoroughly. “Couldn’t you wait go five minutes without annoying me?” he jokes.  
  
Michael rolls his eyes and moves to push him up against the sink. “Oh, like you’re not happy to see me.” There’s a harsh tone to his voice now. Calum looks up at him - his eyes are dark, almost completely black - and for a moment his heart freezes in his chest. He blinks and it’s gone, but the unsettled feeling sticks around his ribs and his magic crawls over his skin, thrumming. Michael smells wrong again - fire and brimstone is what floats to the top of his mind, he doesn’t know why - and anyway he was just with Michael five minutes ago and he didn’t smell like this. He knows for sure; when they were cuddling on the bus he’d had his face pressed into Michael’s shoulder for a while and he’d smelled like his usual soap and sweat and hairspray.  
  
“Funnily enough,” Calum says, “I’m not, because I know you’re not really Michael.” The words are a challenge: he tips his chin up, defiantly, and stares at the thing wearing Michael’s face.  
  
And he says back in a low, dangerous voice, “What makes you think that? Of course it’s me.” That’s the scary part though - he doesn’t know for sure, he could be making a huge ass of himself right now - but it just feels wrong. The hands around his wrists aren’t gentle, aren’t playing around with him and trying to get a rise out of him. They’re forceful - pressing hard, brutal - and Calum’s just… sure. “Don’t you trust me, Calum?”  
  
Sober it’s easier. Michael - or maybe it’s not him - kisses him hard, and he kisses back despite his hesitation to buy himself time to think. He pulls away and says, “Sorry, I just…” playing at innocence. It’s hard to think straight. He imagines this Michael dissolving, becoming nothing in a pile on the floor and folding in on himself, and nothing happens. So not a thoughtform, then - he’d been right about that hunch, at least - and he goes, “Can we not do this right now? Anyone could walk in here and see us.”  
  
Michael goes, “That’s the point, isn’t it? Anyone could come in and catch you on your knees for me.”  
  
“Never said I’d be the one on his knees,” Calum says with a smirk. He twists his wrists and steps out of reach. “We can do this later and I’ll make it up to you.” He licks his lips, trying to be convincing, and turns his back and walks out before he can go back on his decision. Because that’s the thing - is that he would have, he would have gotten on his knees and he would have done it - but it doesn’t feel quite right. There’s a piano in their green room and he sits down at it, plunks at the keys for a few minutes before he’s picking out a familiar tune from his childhood.  
  
Confirming his suspicions about the encounter in the bathroom, Michael joins him shortly after. “Where’d you go,” Michael whines, twining his arms around Calum’s shoulders.  
  
“Couldn’t find you, asshole,” Calum says affectionately. He picks out the little melody on the keys again and Michael doesn’t react. Just to be sure he does it again, though. Michael doesn’t mention anything about it and so he decides that Michael genuinely doesn’t know - whatever’s happening, it’s someone else and Calum needs to make himself remember that - and he’s sort of resolved to figuring it out on his own. Nothing else happens anyway; by the time they go on that night he’s stopped feeling so creepy-crawly about it and he tries his best to enjoy himself on stage.  
  
He hangs back after they leave the stage, in the dimly lit wings. Niall gives him a strange look when he runs by before heading onstage himself. Calum just waves, knowing that if he waits by himself for long enough it’ll happen. And - eventually - it does. During 1D’s set while he’s leaning against a wall watching them, nonchalant, Michael comes to him. Or the thing wearing his face, anyway, and soon enough Calum will know its’ real name. “Hey you,” Michael says, still wearing the same clothes he’d worn onstage. There are real showers here with actual water pressure; Calum knows that the real Michael would have showered by now, put on sweats, would smell like soap and toothpaste and not this strange smoky smell. Calum lets himself be pressed against the wall anyway - he’s weak - and he’s thinking about it and when Michael leans forward to kiss him Calum whistles the same melody from earlier. Michael stiffens and pulls away. “Where’d you hear that?” he demands, arms caging Calum in.  
  
“It’s from when I was a little kid,” Calum answers. He whistles it again more clearly and watches as Michael’s eyes go completely dark and he shudders. The realization dawns on him. “I know what you are,” he says.  
  
The thing snarls and for a second its features shift to something more primal - and more terrifying - but Calum doesn’t back away. “You don’t know anything,” it growls.  
  
Calum whistles again. “You’re a demon,” he says.  
  
It grins at him and tells him, “No shit. You’re the one who called me here.”  
  
Which means that Calum’s the only one who can send it away. Fuck. He grinds his teeth crankily. “Could you at least borrow someone else’s face,” he sighs. The demon’s hands are strong on his arms - he’s not going to be able to get away without a fight, without causing a scene - and anyone who sees them won’t see Calum face to face with a demon, they’ll see Calum being a dick and picking a fight with his best friend. Clever, demons are. He feels sick to his stomach about the fact that he’s let it touch him.  
  
“I can’t,” the demon tells him.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
It laughs - a jerky, broken sound - and tells him, “What’s the point of summoning a lust demon if you don’t want it to look like the person you’re dying to fuck?” And the pieces click together in Calum’s mind in a painful sort of way - lust demon, being seduced, Michael’s face - and he squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not nearly bad enough a person to consider just fucking the demon so he can find out what Michael looks like naked. Instead he feels vaguely disgusted with himself and moreover he has to figure out how to get rid of this thing before anyone else finds out he exists. “Don’t you want me, Calum?” the demon says in a tone of voice remarkably like Michael’s pleading one, blinking its eyes slowly. “Don’t you want to be with me?”  
  
Calum bites the inside of his own cheek hard. “You’re not him,” he says.  
  
The demon rolls its eyes. “Oh, don’t be like that. He’s never going to see you that way, so why not take what you can get?”   
  
It’s a tempting offer - it really, really is - but Calum forces himself to walk away. “I’m going to figure out how to get rid of you,” he tells it. “Leave me and my friends alone.” And then he shoves it backward with all his strength and storms off to the bus, where he finds the real Michael wearing an old Sex Pistols shirt and sweats playing Call of Duty. He’s never been more happy - more relieved - to see Michael in his life.  
  
“Hey,” Michael says, glancing up from his game with that same worried expression from earlier. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Calum laughs weakly and tucks himself under Michael’s arm.  
  
\--  
  
As the days of October roll by Calum’s magic bursts out accidentally more and more. Part of it is because he’s stressed - he’s losing control - and part of it is that, being the dumbass he currently is, he still hasn’t taken any precautions. He’s been too busy freaking out about the demon. He hasn’t actually seen it for a few days, so maybe it’s lost interest in him and gone to terrorize someone else for a while. In the meantime he’s been trying to figure out the demon’s name - according to the internet if he can learn its name there’s a small chance he can banish it by himself - but there are so many demons in so many different mythologies that represent lust that it’s next to impossible for him to figure out which it could be. If he were smart he would talk to Niall about it, strength in numbers and all that, but he doesn’t want everyone he knows to find out what’s happened and freak out.  
  
His resolution for the time being is to never let Michael out of his sight. “Dude,” Michael tells him one morning. “I think you’re taking best friend time a little too seriously.” He laughs about it though, and ruffles Calum’s hair, so he can’t be too upset about it. Calum rolls his eyes and pretends to be offended. He’s also taking great pains to stay sober and in control of himself at all times, which turns out to be a major drag when everyone around him is a total lush.  
  
“I am the best best friend,” Calum declares.  
  
Michael agrees and then, after a minute, goes, “So you seem like you’re doing better than you were the last time we had a serious talk.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “I, uh, I told that person you were worried about to fuck off.” Michael reaches for his hand and squeezes it. He can feel the blush spreading across his cheeks, the back of his neck; he buries his face in Michael’s shoulder quickly. Holding hands should not - after all that’s happened - cause this type of reaction in him. The voice in the back of his head reminds him that that was all the demon. This is real, it says.  
  
“Good. I was worried I’d have to beat someone up,” Michael tells him very seriously.  
  
Calum’s so pleased that the potted plant Ashton’s got in the window starts drifting upward slowly. Luke notices and reaches for it, just nudging it along with his fingertips until it settles on the edge of the windowsill. Unfortunately he’s not quick enough to stop it from toppling over and the pot it’s in from shattering on the floor when the bus hits a bump in the road. “Oh, goddamn it,” Luke bitches.  
  
Ashton looks a little ticked off but he just shakes his head and presses his lips together. “This is why we can’t have nice things,” he says. “Calum breaks them all with his giant ego.”  
  
They all burst into hysterical laughter - all being a little sleep deprived and most hungover - and Calum laughs until he can’t breathe, curled up against Michael’s side. “I do not have a giant ego,” he protests weakly. This sends them all into a new peal of laughter. In the end he throws his head back and laughs until tears stream down his cheeks; later he uses his magic to put the pot back the way it was and apologizes to Ashton privately. “Sorry about your plant,” he says once they’re all done laughing.  
  
“Sorry about your face,” Ashton says, and that sets them all laughing again.  
  
\--  
  
  
Somehow Calum manages to have an entire argument with Michael before he realizes it’s the demon fucking with him. “Why are you such an asshole,” he snaps, pushing Michael’s arms away when they reach for his waist, about to leave the room because he can’t deal with the tension between them right now. He’s on the verge of blowing up - there’s so much magic he’s been pushing down that it’s practically begging to be let out - and when he turns to get a parting shot in for good measure, he realizes that Michael’s eyes are completely black and that it’s actually not Michael at all. “Ugh, it’s you,” he sighs. “Should’ve known.”  
  
“Hello, Calum,” it says, clearly mocking him. “Me again. Want to have some fun?”  
  
Calum, already in a bad mood, rolls his eyes. “Fun would be pushing you off a cliff and never seeing you again. Sadly, today is not that day, so what the fuck do you want from me?” He’s done enough reading on demons the last few days to know that it wants to get a reaction out of him; it wants to draw him in and seduce him and use that against him. He’s not going to be fooled just because it’s wearing Michael’s face - and while this whole… ordeal… may have forced him to realize that he’s in love with Michael, he’s not so pathetic as to stoop to a demon’s level to get a moment’s worth of satisfaction nor does he believe its claims that Michael will never feel the same way and that this is the best he’s going to get - and he’s half a second away from punching it in the face, honestly.  
  
The demon wraps one hand around his wrist and tugs him closer. “You know what I want,” it purrs. It’s insidious, the way it gets under his skin using Michael’s voice and Michael’s face and somehow also managing to sound nothing and everything like him. Calum shivers at the touch, despite himself, and he digs his teeth into the raw spot inside his cheek as it touches his face with careful, practiced fingers. It would be so easy to let himself believe that this is Michael - Michael touching him, kissing him, wanting to fuck him - and he almost does again. “I know you want it too,” the demon says, tracing the curve of his jaw with a single finger.  
  
“You’re not real,” Calum hisses.  
  
The thing pauses, considering. It runs both hands over his arms. “When are you going to realize that you can’t resist me?” it asks. “I’m everything you want.”  
  
It’s harder to resist up close. With Michael’s face on - Michael’s hands, Michael’s lips - he gets confused, even though in his head he knows it’s an illusion the demon has some way of tricking his body. His heartbeat picks up, his palms get sweaty. He lifts his hand with the intention of pushing the demon away - he can resist it, he can - but instead his motives get twisted and suddenly they’re pressed together in the little stairway where the demon has him cornered, and after a certain point he stops thinking demon and starts thinking Michael. And maybe his heart’s not totally in it, but other parts of him are all for it - his jeans undone, a warm hand on his cock - and maybe it’s not so bad, actually, because it looks like Michael and tastes like him, probably, so what’s the harm just this once?   
  
The heavy fire door slamming snaps him out of the trance. “Wow, no,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not doing this anymore.”  
  
“You’ll be back,” the demon says confidently. It’s such a fuck-off that it’s wearing Michael’s stupid smirk.   
  
Calum decides to tempt fate further by going out the fire door to find out who saw them and finds Louis, angrily smoking a cigarette underneath an aging, leaky awning. “Uh, care to explain what you were doing back there?” Louis says, offering him the pack. Calum shakes his head to the cigarette.  
  
“You… know about Niall, right?” he asks cautiously. Louis nods curtly. “Yeah, well, that.”  
  
“Is that why you look like you’re about to come apart.”  
  
He sighs and rubs his hands over his face. “I may or may not have accidentally summoned a lust demon while I was drunk a couple of weeks ago and I have no idea how to make him leave me alone,” Calum groans. “This is so stupid. He keeps tricking me and it’s actually ruining my life.”  
  
Louis cocks his head thoughtfully. “Okay,” he says, “But why does he look exactly like Michael? Not that I’m judging, mind.”  
  
“Apparently this particular demon takes on the form of whoever you want to, um.” Calum can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. It’s too embarrassing - not because he wants Michael but because he doesn’t want to admit that he’s been tricked by the demon - but Louis seems to cotton on to his meaning anyway. The look he gets is sympathetic. “I may have… uh, done some things before I realized what was going on.” His face is hot with shame.  
  
“You magical folks need to get your shit sorted,” Louis snorts. “You might want to talk to Michael though.”  
  
Calum sort of wants to punch him. “I can’t talk to him about this,” he says shortly. “What part of this is supposed to sound good? Hey, you know, I accidentally summoned a demon that’s sexually harassing me or whatever, and he looks like you, and the reason for that is because I’m in love with you and too much of an idiot to tell you about it? Not to mention that I have no idea what I’m doing here,” he goes, helplessly.  
  
“Yeah, well, you may want to talk to him about it anyway ‘cause I’m not the only one who saw that whole… thing.”   
  
And this is the part where Calum begins to suspect that he’s well and truly damned. “… How much did he see?”  
  
“Just the part where you were making out with someone else,” Louis tells him. “Although I suspect he may put the rest together on his own given that the dude did look just like him. I mean, he’s likely to recognize his own fucking tattoos, ya know?” That being said, Louis heads back inside to dryness and warmth, leaving Calum to despair of his fate by himself. He sits underneath the awning and watches water run off of it in neat little rivulets, flicking his fingers here and there to blow off steam and make the water droplets jump through the air in a series of amusing acrobatics.   
  
He’s not even surprised anymore when Michael - or the demon, he can’t tell at a distance - comes out and stands beside him for a while. “What,” he says finally, listlessly, and he’s trying not to be mad in case it really is Michael - but then he’s mad anyway - and he’s tired of always trying to figure out which way he’s supposed to be.  
  
“I’m not mad,” Michael starts off with.  
  
Calum says, “Good, I guess.”  
  
“I don’t want to know what you were doing, okay, I just came out to tell you we’re not playing tonight. So if you want to go find your - friend or whatever - and hang out with him, like. I fucked my wrist up pretty bad.” And Calum can feel the hurt in his voice - and it’s really Michael anyway, so he just looks like an asshole - and he should explain himself but he doesn’t. His first thought is about how disappointed their fans are going to be, then how the fuck did Michael hurt his wrist, and then he can’t find the words to explain it all anyway so instead he walks away.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, and walks off into the rain despite not having a coat on or anything.  
  
\--  
  
He gets about three blocks before he realizes that there is a way they could still play. It’s a shitty way - like, the actual shittiest way - but it’s better than disappointing people, and the only person he’d be hurting with this solution is himself. He walks back to the venue, steps in a puddle on the way and soaks his jeans, and finds his way back to the same stairwell he’d been in before and sits down on the bottom step, pissed-off and dripping wet. Calum figures if he just sits and waits long enough eventually the bastard’ll show up, and he’s not wrong about it. The demon finds him there, gives him a look and chuckles to itself darkly.  
  
“Look,” Calum says miserably, letting the water drip from the ends of his hair into his eyes. “I can give you what you want, but you’ve got to do something for me first.”  
  
The demon perks up at that. “I’ll play,” it says, pushing its fingers through its hair in a distinctly Michael-like way. He doesn’t care; Michael is pissed at him anyway.  
  
“So Michael fucked up his wrist,” he tells it. “I kind of figured since you look exactly like him you’d know most of the same stuff he knows so you’d probably be able to play a guitar half-decently. Your choice. If you play a couple shows for me I’ll sleep with you.” And he figures it’s a pretty even deal - both of them will hurt a little - and he hates himself enough to make it work right now. He doesn’t want to have to leave the tour. It’s selfish and completely his own fault, what’s happening, so this form of self-torture will have to be his penance. He can’t get rid of the demon so he may as well make peace with it, right?  
  
“How noble of you,” the demon says.  
  
Calum shakes his head. “That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.”  
  
In a stunning moment of less than its usual dickishness, the demon asks him, “You do realize I’m going to be harder to get rid of?”  
  
“I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” Calum says. The demon smiles, a grotesque parody of Michael’s usual smile, and Calum grudgingly takes its hand and together they go to the green room where undoubtedly his band is gathered, trying to figure out what to do. Its eyes are full dark, pure black and not reflecting any light at all. He supposes it’s pleased with itself. “Wait here,” he tells it just outside the door. He wants to at least do this properly, and he figures everyone will freak right out if he saunters in hand in hand with a Michael doppelganger. As soon as he walks in, Michael gets up to leave. “Wait,” he says. “I have a solution, kind of.”  
  
Michael looks at him and the naked hurt on his face staggers Calum a bit. “Because you’re great at dealing with things,” Michael says quietly.  
  
“We can still play tonight,” Calum tells him. “Well, the rest of us can. Uh… so you guys know about the whole magic thing,” he says, figuring that he might as well let the cat out of the bag since Luke and Ashton know already anyway. He waves his hands nervously, causing the empty drink cans on the table to go flying across the room. “Shit. Sorry. So anyway, I was saying - I have a solution to canceling the shows, at least. But first I kind of need to own up to something.”  
  
His three best friends stare at him blankly and then no one says anything.  
  
“Okay. Uh… There’s really no good way to put this,” he sighs. “I accidentally summoned a demon and he’s, err, graciously agreed to help us out if I do something for him.”  
  
Michael, staring at him wide-eyed, looks a little faint. Luke and Ashton stare at each other in horror, and Niall - who inexplicably is in their dressing room instead of his own - goes “Jesus christ, Calum.” And also, “I think people are going to know it’s someone else on that stage.”  
  
Calum says, “Not exactly,” and pokes his head out into the hall. “Let’s get this over with,” he sighs. The demon steps into the room almost gleefully, eyes dark and grin sharp.  
  
“What the fuck,” Luke says.  
  
“Surprise,” the demon says. “Well, this is fun. You didn’t tell me they were so much fun.”  
  
Niall crosses himself. Calum can’t even look at Michael - well, either of him - and so he stares at his shoes, feeling extremely ill. “Look,” he says to the floor, “It’s either this or we can’t finish the tour. At least this way we have the illusion of… bandiness.”  
  
And Niall looks him in the eye and says, “Yeah, but at what cost?” before going back to his own dressing room and taking Ashton with him. Michael follows soon after - probably because Calum’s brought a monster with his face into theirs - and that leaves him, the demon and Luke to try and figure this out. In the end Luke leaves too, so that’s Calum and the demon alone together and things escalate from there in a mess of harsh words and mouths pressed together sloppily and clothes thrown over the side of the little couch, until an exhausted-looking intern comes and tells them they have thirty minutes to get ready for the show.  
  
Calum goes onstage with his wrists bruised and another hickey sucked into his neck and he has to cover his crotch with his bass through the first three songs before he has a grip on himself. It’s a weird energy onstage that night - the demon touches him and flirts with him and it tries to with Luke as well - and for every time Calum forgets himself and leans into the touches Luke’s pulling away until he remembers they’re supposed to be acting normal about it. In retrospect he probably shouldn’t have dropped this on them so suddenly. There’s nothing to be done about it - the show is already over - so they all get changed out of their show clothes and cleaned up in uncomfortable silence. Except for the demon, who is delighting in all of the unhappiness, and draping himself all over Calum.  
  
“Can you not,” he huffs when he gets out of the shower and the demon tries to corner him in the empty bathroom.  
  
It rolls its eyes at him. “You’d really rather go back to a bus where everyone’s pissed off at you for lying to them than have sex with the guy of your dreams,” it says.  
  
Calum goes, “More like the thing my nightmares are made of,” and leaves.  
  
\--  
  
It takes two days for Michael to start talking to him again. At this point it’s midway through October and Calum is in bad spirits about it - pun intended - and whenever anyone tries to talk to him he bites their head off without intending to. “So,” Michael says, frowning at him. “Why does it look like me?” And he glares at the demon, who has abandoned all pretense of being anything but, who flips him off in return. Well, Calum thinks to himself, at least when the demon crawls into his bed he’s stopped getting his hopes up that it’s the real thing.  
  
“That’s a funny story,” Calum starts. The demon’s hand is on is thigh - pretty much any given moment there’s a hand on him somewhere, a constant reminder of the price he’s paid to keep them on the tour - and he wants to push it away, feels disgusted every time it touches him. It’s a confusing set of feelings he’s going through - on one hand it looks like Michael, feels exactly like being touched by him; but it’s not him and the thing that’s underneath wants to use him, to hollow him out until there’s nothing left - and for the most part he just wants to be left alone. He goes to push it away and instead, defeated, rests his hand on top of its hand and leaves it there.  
  
None of them quite know how to react to it.  
  
Michael just stares at him until he answers. “Um, look, all you need to worry about is your wrist getting better so he can leave, okay?” he says to start. “It’s pretty coincidental that he looks like you but, I mean, he could’ve looked like anyone probably.” The hand on his thigh squeezes; he sighs and goes, “Look, okay, he’s a lust demon; don’t read too much into it, he’s just an asshole and I am going to get rid of him.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael says, and goes to the front lounge where the rest of them are gathered. Calum can’t even be glad to see him go because there’s another version of him right next to him. He can’t even enjoy the touch he leans into because it’s not the right one - smells wrong, feels wrong, his brain screams at him that it’s all wrong - and he breaks everything a little more day by day, including his own heart. And how can he be breaking his own heart when everything he wants is right beside him all the time?  
  
Calum should probably go after him.  
  
Instead he ends up caught up chasing the taste of the demon’s mouth and wondering when it’s finally going to have enough of him to make him feel completely empty. After, he goes out to the bunks to grab his phone and Ashton looks at him hard and goes, “You’re fucking around with the wrong one,” meaning the demon, he thinks, but Michael wants nothing to do with him so that’s all there is.  
  
The only person happy in all of this is the demon, and Calum’s no closer to figuring out its name. He needs the name in order to banish it. He is digging himself a deeper and deeper hole by continuing to give himself to it; if he keeps this up he’s going to be beholden to it forever. When it reaches for him later - tries to pull him down into its lap, gives him Michael’s pleading eyes and bites his lip in that particular way - he says, “I’m not doing this anymore,” and barricades himself in his bunk.  
  
Michael figures it out on his own anyway, and comes to him the next day when he’s just woken up and is most susceptible to demon-related fuckery. He has to blink his eyes several dozen times before he figures out which it is - green eyes, not black - and he goes “What,” and pulls a pillow up over his head.  
  
“I’m not mad at you,” Michael tells him.  
  
“Then what are you,” Calum groans. “Also who are you, because it’s too early and I am not dealing with you trying to manipulate me into bed again. I’m not turning myself black and blue for you,” and he thinks that maybe when they can all laugh about this that that would make an alright song lyric. The hand on his shoulder stays where it is and only reaches to stroke his hair. So Michael, then.  
  
“Mostly I’m confused about why you summoned a lust demon to look exactly like me when there’s the real me right in front of you,” Michael says. He has dark circles under his eyes like maybe he hasn’t been sleeping and everything he does is slightly clumsy - because of course the arm he’s injured had to be his dominant hand - and it’s endearing as fuck and Calum hates it. Calum knows he should probably be honest at this point. There’s nothing for him to lose because he’s already lost it all; he rolls the words around in his head but can’t make himself say them. “Whatever, I don’t care,” Michael tells him. “I just hate seeing you with him.”  
  
Calum peers out from under his pillow suspiciously. “For one,” he points out, “It was an accident and I was drunk.” Even though he doesn’t fit - Calum by himself barely fits - Michael crawls into the bunk with him and has to shove his leg between both of Calum’s to make the space work. He shifts to accommodate Michael’s arm and rolls onto his side grumpily.  
  
“Yeah, and all the stuff right now is not an accident nor are you drunk,” Michael says sourly.  
  
There’s nothing he can say to that. He knows exactly how it looks; he feels like shit about it. Until he can find out the name he’s kind of trapped into giving the demon whatever it wants so it’ll keep playing shows with them until Michael’s wrist is better. “How’d you fuck your wrist up anyway,” Calum asks, deciding to change the subject.   
  
Michael laughs against his neck, warm little puffs of air, and Calum thinks that that feeling is a thousand times better than anything. “Louis and Zayn bet I couldn’t climb all the way to the top of the lighting rig. Turns out I couldn’t.” He wiggles his fingers over the top of his splint. It’s a grudging sort of forgiveness, to be sure, but Calum’s glad for it all the same. “Show me some cool magic stuff. It’s not fair you showed Luke and you haven’t shown me anything.”  
  
“Okay,” Calum says. “What color do you want your hair to be this week?”  
  
“Surprise me.” After a moment’s consideration Calum snaps his fingers and turns Michael’s hair neon green. He feels like that wasn’t quite showy enough, though, and he turns his own hair violently purple for a minute before turning it back. Michael elbows him in the stomach and goes, “You’ve been letting me kill my hair with bleach when you could have been doing this the whole time. I’m so mad at you right now.” He pretends to be furious but Calum can tell that he actually isn’t; they both start laughing and Calum closes his eyes, tucks his head under Michael’s chin like they used to before everything got so fucked up.   
  
Calum’s relieved that no one has asked him to use his magic to fix Michael’s wrist - technically he could, but he’d just be digging them a deeper hole. One of the immutable properties of magic is that when doing a healing spell the negative energy from the injury has to go somewhere - and that somewhere is usually the caster’s own body. He’s absorbed other people’s hurt before, of course, and he won’t do it again unless it’s a life-or-death situation. Maybe it’s cowardly of him but he’s relieved that no one has asked him to do it. Anyway he’s going to need all the power he has for when they actually banish the demon. Which he’s still figuring out the exact particulars of, because he doesn’t know how he’s going to trap it without it noticing - and that’s easier said than done given that it never lets him out of sight for long. He’s been puzzling it out the best he can.  
  
And eventually - as it always happens these days - the demon pokes its head into Calum’s bunk and grins sadistically. “Oh good,” it says, letting the black of its true eyes show through for a second. “You’re here.” It stares at Michael for so long that even Calum starts to get uncomfortable; Michael doesn’t break eye contact. The demon cracks its neck, clearly trying to be intimidating, and with a sullen glare it goes, “Can you leave so I can have Calum now, or…?”  
  
“He doesn’t belong to you.”   
  
The demon doesn’t like that answer, though, and Calum wants to crawl into a small hole. He already knows where this is going to go since Michael - both versions of him - has his stubborn face on. “It’s fine,” Calum grumbles, “I’ll go.” There has got to be a better way to get himself out of this situation - but if there is, the universe is holding out on him. Someone’s having a really good laugh at his expense. He has to force himself to ignore the crestfallen look on Michael’s face as he leaves. At least - if there’s anything good that can come from this - Calum’s getting pretty great at hiding his true feelings.  
  
\--  
  
Calum plays badly that night, feeling twitchy and agitated every time the demon touches him onstage. He’s trying not to let it show. It comes to a head during Good Girls - you know the part - when the demon decides that that night it’s going to be “I want Calum in my bed,” and offstage Michael makes a face and storms off with Harry Styles trailing behind him. The demon stares at him with its black eyes and licks its lips - and that is so patently unfair, Calum thinks, and his body is rebelling against him because his cock twitches with interest - and there’s nothing that can be done but to finish the song.   
  
After, once they’ve rushed offstage still high on the cheers from the crowd and covered in a thin sheen of sweat, he corners the demon and goes, “What the fuck was that?”  
  
“Oh, so now it is me you want,” the demon muses, putting on Michael’s signature smirk and cocking its hip.   
  
Calum grits his teeth. “I asked you to behave yourself and this is what you do,” he growls. Despite knowing that he shouldn’t - because the demon is wearing Michael’s face and he can’t resist - he gives it a shove and then grabs the front of its shirt roughly. He’s so frustrated, and he’s incredibly exasperated after dodging its advances all morning, and since Michael’s been weird to him again it’s all starting to boil over a bit and that’s how he ends up kissing the demon messily sidestage, hidden only by a curtain and a couple of hastily dimmed lights. “You’re such a fucking dick,” he mumbles against the demon’s mouth.  
  
It laughs and tells him, “At least I’m honest. You’re here pretending you’re not pissed that Michael’s off doing who-knows-what with Harry Styles.”  
And Calum protests, “I’m not - it’s not like that, he’s not like that,” and he really doesn’t know why he’s trying to defend Michael’s honor to this knock-off version when he’s done shit twice as bad this week alone. It could be like that for all he knows; it’s not like him and Michael are in prime best friends form these days, what with him having accidentally summoned this asshole with no idea how to get rid of him and still not being honest about the origins of it all - although that part he suspects Michael has figured out already. Which may in fact be the worst part of it all, being that he wants to make out with real Michael and not impostor-Michael and has no idea how to go about that either. After, to his dual shock and dismay, when he’s got semen on the front of his jeans and his jaw that overworked, stretched-out feeling, he sits back on his knees a bit and, snarky, goes, “At least now we know where all the holes in my jeans came from, I suppose.”  
  
“That’s the spirit,” the demon tells him brightly.  
  
Calum accepts its help getting up grudgingly. They walk back to the dressing rooms side by side, silently, and he can’t help asking. “Do you even get anything out of this,” he asks, “or is it just all about the doom and gloom for you lot?”  
  
“Seeing your blatant unhappiness at my expense really warms the cockles of my black little heart.” Calum could punch it, honestly, but for the fact that it looks exactly like Michael, whom he definitely does not want to punch. Maybe he could trick the demon into giving up its name; he’s already tricked it into saving the tour, so surely it can’t be that hard. He needs to find out what demons like besides death and destruction. Calum makes note that definitely interrupting Niall and Ashton when they’re going at it is high on the list - gets a hearty chuckle out of the dark fucker when that happens - and that songs in minor keys make it a bit angry.  
  
Niall glares at the both of them as he pulls his jeans up. “Look, I know that Lucifer over there isn’t house-trained, but Calum - you should really try knocking.”  
  
Obviously the mature response is to flip him off and then magic away his shirt across the room mid-buttoning. “I’m glad you find my suffering so funny,” Calum says sourly. He flops himself on the couch, careful to avoid the wet spot - which, gross - until it’s time to go back on for Teenage Dirtbag. Rather than get himself into more trouble he spends the roughly hour or so on Twitter reading all the rumors about himself that’ve been started since he checked this morning; staggeringly there is no suspicion whatsoever about him being a witch or the Michael onstage being a demon, so that’s a relief. Once he tires of that he goes back to his long-suffering hobby of trying to figure out how to vanquish his personal demon, or at least figuring out its name. While he’s busy doing that his bandmates wander in and out of the room aimlessly.  
  
Michael comes in after a while with his hair all fucked up and his cheeks flushed red. “Someone’s been busy,” the demon comments, raising its eyebrows suggestively. Calum looks away when the accusation isn’t refuted, not even a little bit. And he tries not to bristle at the idea of Michael with Harry - although he supposes he deserves it, he surmises, as currently he’s got a particularly large bruise on his exposed shoulder that he’s not even attempting to hide - but it stings in his soft and bitter places. Luke looks at him sympathetically.  
  
“Silence from the peanut gallery,” Luke says, effortlessly sliding onto the couch between Calum and the hell-beast. He bunches himself into Calum’s side protectively.  
  
Later - when they’ve eaten approximately their own weight in pizza each and he’s wearing a hoodie stolen from Ashton - when he can’t sleep and he’s lying awake in his bunk alone, he wonders what they’re going to do about Halloween. He has been trying not to think about it but it’s really stressing him out. Halloween is kind of the deadline on this thing; if he can’t get rid of the demon by the end of the month then Michael’s effectively going to be damned and he’ll be magicked away to purgatory. Calum’s not exactly the tricky type. If he wants to end this he’s going to have to enlist help - and that of itself is a herculean task, since everybody he knows is mad at him. Still - he can’t have Michael going out with Harry fucking Styles, can he. There’s no contest there.  
  
Three in the morning isn’t the best time to come up with these type of plans. “I need your help with something,” he says, and plonks himself down into the demon’s lap with no context.  
  
“Are you going to make me an offer I can’t refuse,” the demon chuckles, pressing pause on the DVD of The Godfather that it had gotten from… somewhere. “I’m learning so much about you humans from this. Might even try my hand at becoming a mob boss. I feel like I could pull a really convincing Don Corleone.”  
  
Calum doesn’t point out that it might want to try not looking like an unwashed eighteen year old first, or that Don Corleone wasn’t real. “Anyway. I want to keep Michael away from Harry Styles.”  
  
The demon seems to realize what he’s asking it for and nods approvingly. “I am a terrible influence on you, Calum Hood,” it says. “When I met you you were practically a blushing virgin, and look at you now. You’re suggesting that we sabotage your best friend’s relationship with a pop sensation. I’ve never been so proud.” To keep up the act Calum presses into its side on the couch and stays there for the rest of the movie, even though he doesn’t particularly like The Godfather. He’s pleased with himself how easy it is to get his way; in his head he’s pretending it’s Michael he’s sprawled out on the couch with, Michael who’s got one hand slid under his shirt rubbing his chest suggestively. The little voice in his head - or devil on his shoulder as it were - tells him maybe it wouldn’t be half bad doing this permanently.   
  
It’s like an itch he can’t quite scratch though - all the little touches and everything don’t mean anything to him, or not as much as they should at any rate - and he seethes under his skin seeing Michael and Harry cozying off together. “I hate this,” he says to the demon.  
  
“Worry not, my fair Calum. I have a plan.”  
  
\--  
  
The plan consists mainly of Calum catching Michael - the real one - alone and asking him to hang out. His opportunity arises one morning when he catches Michael stumbling out of his bunk, thankfully alone, and he goes, “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” And Michael, sleepy-eyed and caught off-guard, nods at him and angrily jabs the buttons on the coffee maker until Calum takes over for him and fits the filter in the basket properly. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafts through the air soon enough. Calum pours them both a cup and puts the sugar and cream in just the way Michael likes it. “There,” he says finally. “Caffeinate. Percolate. Whatever it is you do.”  
  
Michael gives him a strange, forlorn look and goes to take up the whole of the front lounge couch, generously leaving Calum the floor. “What was it you wanted to talk about?” He’s still just tired enough that he doesn’t care when his doppelganger slips out of the bus fully dressed, asks, “Where’s he going this early? Thought he was still terrorizing you, or whatever,” and side-eyes the marks on Calum’s neck.  
  
“Oh, you know,” Calum tells him. “Evil waits for no man, or something. I’m sure he’s off kicking puppies or pushing old ladies into the street.”  
  
“Spitting in people’s coffees.” That earns a laugh out of Calum, and then Michael goes on to say, “How do you know I’m not the impostor and I haven’t just spit in your coffee anyway?”  
  
Calum leans back against the couch and sighs. “If it weren’t the real you you’d have given up half the couch for me, already,” he says pointedly. They sit in an uncomfortable silence until all the coffee’s gone and Calum can’t quite think of what else to say. He feels like ‘Please don’t date Harry because I’m desperately in love with you and I know I’m kind of banging the evil version of you but try not to take it personally, I just have to manipulate him into telling me his name or you’ll be banished to purgatory forever’ might not be a great place to start. But then leading with ‘So it’s entirely plausible that your evil twin is out sabotaging your relationship with Harry Styles right now - for me, no less - and I am only here to act as a distraction so you don’t find out’ doesn’t exactly put him in the running for friend of the year either.   
  
Michael swats him on the back of the neck and goes, “Are you saying I’m not nice to you?” And the hand on the back of his neck lingers there, gives an awkward squeeze, scrapes the baby hairs he hasn’t been tidying up properly and then slides down to rest on his shoulder. Michael’s fingers play at the collar of his shirt but not quite going under it; this is where they’re at, then, and Calum has to fight himself not to lean into the touch.  
  
And, “That’s exactly what I’m saying, you are a dick. Or have been recently, anyway.”  
  
“I’m wallowing in my dying teen angst,” Michael says crossly. Calum doesn’t point out that they’ve each got almost, like, a full year of teenagedom to look forward to. He doesn’t ask what’s angsting about, anyway, because he doesn’t want to hear it if it’s about Harry. He does get up onto the couch when Michael moves his legs and spends the morning watching bad anime with Michael’s feet in his lap. It’s the most normal they’ve been to each other in days - he messes it up, kind of, by laying his hand flat on Michael’s calf and just looking at the curve of it - but if anyone else notices they don’t say anything.   
  
When the demon comes back it winks at Calum cheekily. “Mission accomplished,” it says. No one misses Michael’s noise of dissent when it crowds onto the couch on Calum’s other side - and how fucking bizarre is that when there are two of him on either side - and then Calum glances over for confirmation that it had gone well.   
  
“Thanks,” he says when Michael leaves - presumably to hang out with Harry - and he’s surprised to genuinely mean it.  
  
It’s not been ten minutes before Michael comes back in a properly full rage. “What did you do,” he shouts, pushing Calum out of the way in a bizarrely gentle kind of way; Calum watches as he gets up in his own face - which is, as it turns out, as strange to see as it sounds - and grabs his doppelganger by the collar and punches himself clean in the face. “You just had to ruin everything, didn’t you,” Michael goes, face beginning to go red with anger. And Calum knows if he gets mad enough he’s going to start crying - he’s almost there already - and he just continues it, says, “It’s not enough you had to have Calum, you had to go and fuck everything up with the one person I could actually fucking talk to in all this mess.”  
  
The demon makes things worse by replying, “It was Calum’s choice, you idiot, all I did was take the chance you were too afraid to take!”  
  
Michael punches his mirror image in the face again and growls, “Not a fair choice if you trick him into it, you fucking prick.” To Calum’s horror he does all the punching with his bad wrist and then he’s crying and storming off again; even though the demon grabs after him Calum storms off crying similarly and decides he needs to make it right between them. He’s trying not to dwell on the idea that Michael didn’t argue that he hadn’t wanted it. Michael’s always been a crap arguer, prone to long-winded blustering before finally making his point and getting off-topic often.   
  
He finds Harry first, who is the second to last person he’d wanted to run into. “Calum,” Harry says, blinking at him curiously. “Why has your demon friend tried to come onto me?”  
  
“I thought - weren’t you and Mikey…?”  
  
Harry shakes his head. Calum wants to tell him get a haircut, half-fondly, but he’s got other things to worry about at the moment. “He’s been crying to me about you mostly,” Harry tells him. “I’m not s’posed to be telling you this really, but I think you two ought to talk about it because this is really starting to get out of hand. Membership to the hopelessly in love with your bandmate and too chickenshit to tell them club is closed for this year. You need to just tell him, mate.”  
  
“Take your own advice,” Calum tells him, and if he runs into Louis then he’s going to say as much then, too. He finds Michael sitting on the edge of the stage nursing his hurt feelings sulkily. “Hey, slugger,” he says, and sits down on the edge of it too.  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” Michael says. It’s obvious he’s been crying. Fuck. He doesn’t know what to say to make it any better, so he just sits there quietly and waits.  
  
Finally all he can think of to say is, “Sorry.” And then, after a minute, “I wanted it to be you, you know. Sorry I was shitty about it.” He wants to say something - make some joke - about Michael punching himself in the face and how fitting it is, but can’t find the words to make it turn out right. Instead he reaches out and rubs his hand over Michael’s bruised knuckles and it’s a start, maybe, because Michael doesn’t pull away but he doesn’t move any closer than they are, either.  
  
“I always thought Harry looked kind of like a troll doll, before we met him,” Michael says by way of an apology.  
  
Calum says back, “He still does look like a troll doll a bit.” What he’s said is just hanging between them threatening to shatter. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, he thinks. Doesn’t even know why he just admitted it like that - that he’d wished it was Michael - but now it’s out there and he can’t really take it back. In line with his behavior lately he decides he’s going to do one last stupid thing, even the score. “Give me your arm,” he sighs. Puts his hands around Michael’s wrist.  
  
It takes a bit to slip into that space. Everyone’s always said it’s easier with someone’s body you know intimately; he’d always thought they meant like girlfriends and things. After a second he blinks his eyes and he can see everything - all the veins outlined faintly against Michael’s skin in a light red, save for the inflamed, slightly red area where he’s sprained his stupid wrist. Calum sucks a deep breath in and with all the power he’s got in him he pulls that pain towards his own body, watching as it passes to his own skin a shade darker than his own skin tone. It aches something fierce - he’s pretty sure he swears about it during - but then he pulls himself back and Michael’s staring at him and he feels a bit unwell.  
  
The magic’s all gone out of him for the moment and all he can do after it is slump back on the stage and stare at the ceiling of the arena. Michael goes, “I didn’t think - I wanted it to be me,” and then he goes off somewhere, Calum doesn’t know. And then he realizes, what is that even supposed to mean?  
  
\--  
  
Calum’s sister comes to visit when they’re in Las Vegas. “You summoned,” she says angrily, “the seventh prince of Hell and all I get is a bloody text message?” They take an Instagram photo together and have lunch before he gets swept up in a rush of press; he wishes they could have had more time together and surreptitiously googles the princes of Hell during an interview. It’s a lot more than he’s had to go on, recently. And then he finds it, and stares at the screen for a moment thinking. He doesn’t know how he’s going to set up a demon trap without getting caught out. Considering he’s never alone more than five minutes at a time - it’s a tall order. Plus he can’t let on that he knows, yet, until he’s figured out how to exterminate the little bugger for good.  
  
The only person he tells is Michael, in the middle of the night. He reaches over and stabs blindly at the XBox controller in Michael’s hands until it makes the game pause - he doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t care - only this is important, like. “I know,” he says quickly.  
  
Michael what-the-fucks at him. “Uh,” he says, eyeing Calum like he’s a crazy person, which possibly he is.  
  
“The name,” Calum hisses.  
  
“The name,” Michael repeats.  
  
Calum groans and fits himself into the empty space on the couch, drapes his legs over Michael’s. “I just want things to go back to how they were before,” he sighs. He wants a bit of a cuddle, he wants someone else to say that things will be okay for once, he wants to bury his face in Michael’s chest and ignore the world for a while. As it is Michael grumbles at him and pulls him in for an awkward hug and refuses to let go when he squirms.  
  
“I don’t want them to go back,” Michael says softly. Calum hasn’t even had time to properly fathom what that means when he adds, like it’s nothing, “Do you have any idea what it’s like being jealous of yourself? Only the other you’s like, ten times better at chatting people up and doesn’t say stupid stuff on stage and he’s all, like, charming about everything so you can’t even be mad about it. And then you realize that the other you never has morning breath or bed hair and you kind of just wonder, after a while, what the other person could ever see in the shitty version of you.”  
  
And Calum doesn’t even know what to say to that - he likes Michael’s stupid bed hair and probably his morning breath too, if he’d ever got the chance - and the first thing that pops out of his mouth is, “I still want it to be you.”  
  
“Me too.”  
  
Suddenly Calum’s mouth feels dry and he can’t quite remember how to breathe. Someone’s taken all the air out of the room, he’s sure of it. But also - also, he’s figured out the last piece of the puzzle; he’s figured out how he’s going to banish Asmodai back to whence he came - Michael’s hand moves up his leg and they kind of hover near each other, vaguely. “So, um,” he says. “Just so I’m clear we’re not getting our signals crossed, here,” and he’s trying to figure out how best to make an ass of himself.   
  
Michael sits up properly and tells him, “You’re the stupidest ever,” and hauls him close by the front of his shirt. Before either of them can lose their nerve Michael’s hand is cupped around his neck and Calum’s skin prickles with nervous excitement over it. Their lips barely meet before Calum’s giggling nervously and he buries his face in Michael’s neck. Which is stupid considering how many times he’s done things a thousand times worse than this with the demon - with Asmodai, he thinks, repeating the name over and over in his head so he doesn’t forget - but maybe he had been the one bewitched this whole time because he can’t remember how to kiss properly now.  
  
It turns out that it doesn’t matter, really; their mouths slide together and it’s messy and there’s a lot of teeth, and it’s good - like, better than anything - and Michael touches his face a lot like he can’t believe he’s real. He touches Michael’s hair a lot, too, and his cheek, his neck, his shoulder. It’s different in a shockingly good way. “How are you even real,” Calum manages to say. There’s a lot he wants to say, but doesn’t - why aren’t you mad at me, what is this, what does this mean - since it’s the dead of night and he feels he’s already said too much.  
  
“I like you like this,” Michael tells him.  
  
Calum laughs at the bizarre deja vu and goes, “That’s what you said the first time, only it wasn’t actually you.” Michael pinches his arm meanly and then pecks him on the forehead a second later. “I probably deserved that, huh.” He resolves to only do this, the kissing thing, with the right one from now on. It’s not going to be long before they’re rid of the demon anyway. They curl up together on the couch and he watches Michael play Watch Dogs. It’s actually a pretty interesting game once he gets the plot of it. He starts feeling heavy with sleep, though, and before he peels himself off the couch he presses his mouth softly to the juncture between Michael’s neck and shoulder and goes “I’ll see you later.”  
  
“It’s just me now, right?” The way Michael’s hand trails down his arm is so uncertain. Calum could break.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, though, and sincerely means it. “Always been you.”  
  
So they’re not quite best friends, now, and he doesn’t know what they are. Friends who kiss? He wouldn’t mind that so much probably - it’s just he’s kind of always been weak for Michael and now with this whole thing almost settled he doesn’t know where they stand. In the morning he stares forlornly at his reflection in the mirror and thinks, mirrors. Mirror images. He’ll never be able to trick Asmodai into leaving willingly but he can do almost as good. Calum lights the Glade candle they keep in the bus bathroom - four dudes, no ventilation; there weren’t a lot of other options - with a twitch of his fingers and leans against the counter hoping his plan will work.   
  
Michael pokes his head in after a minute. “Nice fire hazard,” he says.  
  
“I’m thinking of taking up arson as a career choice,” Calum says back. He watches their reflections in the mirror. Once he’s sure it’s the demon and not the real Michael he reaches over and pulls the bathroom door closed, locks it. “C’mere,” he says, purposely keeping his back to the mirror after the door is latched. When he washed his hands he’d drawn the symbols on the mirror with water - the mirror is dirty enough it won’t look out of the ordinary, he thinks - and by now they’ve faded enough so as not to be visible. He knows it’s the demon; they both know he knows so he drops the pretense about it. “I know it’s you,” he says.  
  
Asmodai’s eyebrows knit together. “That’s never stopped you before, has it?”  
  
“Yeah, well, all good things come to an end,” Calum tells him. He breathes in the unclean brimstone smell one last time, breathes out to steady his nerves. As much as he’d like to see the demon’s true face when he says the incantation, he knows he can’t face the mirror or he risks trapping himself too, and that wouldn’t do very well. It’s not a very good incantation, either - he’s just kind of hoping it works. Calum’s really not very good at witching. “One last kiss for old time’s sake,” he says, pressing his lips dry against the demon’s cheek and then adds, “Asmodai. I’m banishing you back to the realm of the undead, so you can kind of fuck off forever.”   
  
It gets very hot in the bathroom then, and he has to press his eyes closed because it feels like keeping them open is going to sizzle them right out of his head. All the energy drains out of him with the spell; one minute he’s clutching the counter for support and then the next someone is banging on the bathroom door shouting, “If you’re hotboxing the bathroom you have to share!” Calum opens his eyes. He’s alone in the bathroom; on the other side of the mirror Asmodai - still with Michael’s appearance but more pissed off - bangs on the glass, soundlessly demanding to be let out. There’s one last thing he has to do before he opens the door: carefully he pulls his shirt off and sets it aside, then pulls the mirror off the wall and covers it with his shirt, having decided that sacrificing one shirt in the long run isn’t so bad to get rid of their demon problem permanently.   
  
“What are you doing,” Ashton says when he unlocks the door. He doesn’t look surprised - he’s dating Niall, he’s probably seen a lot of questionable stuff already - so much as suspicious. Calum shrugs at him the best he can under the weight of the mirror. It’s probably better that he immediately takes it outside; he doesn’t want to risk keeping any bad energy around in case of, like, residual effects.  
  
He takes the mirror into the parking lot and smashes it.  
  
Everyone comes out after a little while, drawn to the sound and the potential for destruction, and someone comes up with a sledgehammer which Calum feels an immense satisfaction about using to break the mirror. “Aren’t we going to get seven years’ bad luck from this,” Harry worries.  
  
“Who cares,” Calum tells him. “I just banished a demon.”  
  
And Niall says, “Dude,” and whumps him on the shoulder.   
  
The only person absent from the proceedings is Michael, who appears from somewhere after the fact and looks absolutely bewildered at the broken mirror shards all over the place. “I go to take a shower and this is what you get up to,” he says incredulously. Calum can only laugh and throws his arms around Michael’s shoulders and kisses him; he really doesn’t care that everyone can see. He’s just glad it’s all over.   
  
Michael makes a surprised sound in his throat and kisses back and when someone - probably Zayn - goes, “Are you absolutely sure you got rid of the right one?” he pulls Calum a little closer and flips everyone off. They get written about in all the gossip rags that night - some headline about them being out of control or whatever - and he really, really doesn’t care because that means that it’s over.  
  
\--  
  
Calum’s getting dressed on Halloween night before the show when Michael comes up behind him and starts kissing his neck sloppily. “Fuck off,” Calum whines, having just fucked up his Pete Wentz circa 2006 eyeliner. One side’s thicker than the other, now, and he has no idea about makeup or anything so that means he’s going to have to start over. They’re supposed to be going as Fall Out Boy, which he supposes no one is going to get other than them, but privately he thinks they all look like dicks. “What do you think you are, a vampire or something,” he bitches.  
  
Michael laughs against his shoulder. “Or something, I guess.”  
  
And Calum turns to kiss him properly but something’s not quite right. His heart freezes in his chest as Michael stares at him with pitch-black eyes and immediately he goes, “Fuck me, not this again.”   
  
He’s halfway through crossing himself and rushing through the Our Father before Michael bursts out laughing. “You’re so gullible,” Michael tells him. “They’re contacts. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to fuck with you and see how you’d react.” Now that he’s calmed down after very nearly jumping out of his skin Calum can see that they are, in fact, contacts, and he feels a bit stupid about it really.  
  
“Take them out, you look creepy. I’m glad it’s really you though.”  
  
Michael grins at him and asks, “You sure you don’t want to? For old times’ sake?” And who is Calum to turn down that kind of offer when he looks like that? Michael takes the stick of eyeliner from him and tells him to sit still. Which is easier said than done given that he’s sat on Calum’s thighs and he’s wearing those jeans that look painted on his actual skin and it’s all Calum can do not to squirm, really, because that would only make things worse. Worse still are Michael’s hands, gentle on his face, and now that his nerves are properly un-rattled he thinks the creepy fucking sclera lenses are kind of hot, actually. “Sit still,” Michael scolds him.  
  
“Don’t want to,” he replies.   
  
“Why can’t you just use magic to do this,” Michael complains. “Could be using this time to kiss me instead and this is what you want to do?” Calum takes the hint and twitches his fingers, though he’s distracted and so it takes him a couple of tries to get it right. This is the stupidest Halloween idea they’ve ever had, really - but in their defense it was hard to think of a four-person group costume that wasn’t Ninja Turtles, so - but everyone gave him presents so it’s sort of okay. He might still make them Ninja Turtles if they end up looking as stupid as he suspects they will. Also that would make Michael happy, and Calum’s all for anything that will make him happy.  
  
It’s a careful thing, their relationship - they’ve both been kind of skirting around certain things - and while Calum is enjoying himself immensely, because it’s Michael, there is one thing that needs taken care of still. “Come here,” he says, and pulls Michael to him roughly. “There’s other things I want to do to you besides kiss you,” he goes. Lucky for him Michael catches onto his meaning immediately and kisses him hungrily, crowding him on the little couch so that they’re pressed completely together. For old times’ sake, he thinks, and the many times to come.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, let me know if you liked it! Comment here or come say hello on [Tumblr](http://saidtheskeletons.tumblr.com), I promise I don't bite.


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